1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to download of applications programs and, more particularly, to managing download of application programs to different computing devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today, it is common for users to access on-line repositories to acquire digital media assets, such as songs, television shows and movies. More recently, on-line repositories have also supported download of application programs. The typical interaction with an on-line media repository is that a user will browse the on-line repository from a personal computing device, select one or more items to be downloaded, and then receive digital delivery of the items at the personal computing device via a network.
Computing devices take many different forms and have different functionalities and capacities. For example, computing devices can be wearable, hand-held, portable or desktop. The form factor and functionality of these computing devices also tend to be different. For example, desktop computers tend to have the most processing power and data storage capacity. Hand-held computing device are small and light weight but tend to lack the high processing power and data storage of desktop computers. Different computing devices of the same form factor can even have different capabilities depending on hardware components (e.g., GPS system, wireless communications, microphone, speaker, etc.) and/or software components (e.g., operating system).
Given the wide variety of computing devices, application programs are typically built to operate on certain hardware and software platforms. When such applications are provided to an on-line repository for distribution, the applications are available for download to others regardless of their hardware platform and/or software platform. While an on-line repository could display information about required minimum hardware and/or software components for an application program, users might still download the application program onto computing devices that lack the required minimum hardware and/or software components. As a result, the application program would not function properly, if at all, on the computing devices. Consequently, users are dissatisfied with the application program even through the problem results from users' computing devices not the application program.
Thus, there is a need for improved approaches to manage download of application programs to compatible computing devices.